


The Trudy Campbell ( née Vogel) Joke Book 1952-1960

by havisham



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Childhood, Courtship, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Protagonist, Growing Up, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-14
Updated: 2011-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trudy is funnier than most people give her credit for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trudy Campbell ( née Vogel) Joke Book 1952-1960

**1952.**

Gertrude Vogel, age fifteen, looks down on her grandmother’s casket and breathes a sigh of relief.

She isn’t glad that the old lady’s dead, not so much _. But.._. Here lies Gertrude Vogel the first of her name, but certainly not the last. The crowd is big, all from the church and the family and the business, all here to mourn Gertrude Vogel.

All the while Gertrude Vogel _lives_ , gulping down huge breaths because she’s never seen a dead body before, and her grandma looks like she’s dried up, like those prunes she liked to eat.

All dried up and left for dead.

Gertrude want to touch her cheek, to make sure it’s still firm against her touch, but then again she doesn’t want people to notice that she isn’t crying.

Tom Vogel has been crying, and still has that raw edge of grief that makes Gertrude tighten her hold of his left hand. He comes out his sorrow a little to smile at her. _Thanks sweetheart_ , he says. And she smiles and thinks, I’ll forgive him for naming me Gertrude.

One day.

**1953.**

Gertrude. Gert. Gertie. Gerry. Ger _trude_. Trude. Trudy. Yes, that’s it, it’s decided. Gertrude becomes _Trudy_ , and she already feels light, brighter, more alive because of it.

**1956.**

Tom isn’t the richest father around, but he is the most generous. She makes sure to write home about much the other girls liked her new dress, how wild they were about her cardigans, how chic her white leather pumps looked in the sunlight. _Oh daddy, please, oh please, let me study abroad in Paris this year_ , she writes. _I can’t have all these nice things, and no one to show them off to, can I?_

**1957.**

She’s had beaus -- lots of them, well, not _lots_ of them, because she doesn’t want people to think she’s too fast or anything -- Trudy’s virginity is safely, boringly, secure -- but she’s not a complete innocent. She’s had boyfriends, gentlemen callers, even, who’d come around, frightfully earnest and hair slicked back, with a little sheen of sweat on their brows. Nervous. They all liked her, they all said so in halting tones. They said that they thought she was pretty. And she smiled decorously, but doesn’t say, _of course I’m pretty, would you be here if I wasn’t?_

She’s had plenty of beaus, but they had all been summer boys through and through, and when autumn came around, they scattered and didn’t come around anymore.

**1958.**

She didn’t want to be an old maid. She doesn’t know how to be alone, she’s always had someone, she’s always been wanted. She’s only twenty-one, but already most of her friends are married and having children and the word lingers in the air. There’s a chill.

_Old maid._

**December 31st, 1958.**

When she first meets him, she thinks, _what a worm_ and edges away from him as if whatever he has could be catching.

But it’s a small room, and full of people besides, so she’s thrown with him, again and again, until she has to say something and so she asks what he does.

Advertising, he says, and she smiles. I like those Coca Cola commercials, she offers but he stiffens and says his agency doesn’t have Coca Cola.

“Have you done something I’ve heard of?” she asks, because the silence was getting too much to bear.  
“Depends on what you’ve heard.”  
She wonders why this reply doesn’t surprise her in the least.

**January 1st, 1959.**

Somehow he gets her phone-number.

He calls her the next day. She likes his persistence, but doesn’t say so. Not yet, anyway. _No, listen_ , he says. “Go out with me. One time deal, and if you don’t like me, I’ll never bother you again.”

A pause, as she considers.

“I don’t like you now, so can’t we cut to the chase?” she asks, amused despite herself.  
“Look, Miss Vogel-- May I call you Trudy?”  
“Please do.” As long as he don’t call her anything else.  
“Trudy, I’m afraid I gave the wrong impression last night.”  
“Oh?” This cannot be news to her, but he soldiers on.  
“I was an ass. A real piece of work.”  
“Well...”  
“I’m just asking for chance to redeem myself. One chance. Do you like to go to the movies?”  
“I love going to the movies.”  
“Uh, well. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

She says sharply, “I haven’t said _yes_ yet, Mr. Campbell.”  
There’s a pained _\-- it’s Pete --_  
“I think it’s time to say goodnight. Goodnight, Mr. Campbell.”  
“Goodnight, Trudy.”

 

**March, 1959.**

They _do_ go to the movies. They watch _North by Northwest_ , twice in a row. They agree that nothing could top the scene where Cary Grant is chased by a crop-duster through the cornfields.

They leave during the second intermission, and they don’t ever, ever look back.

**January, 1960.**

Tom doesn’t like him, and says so. _He’s too slick for you, sweetheart. He’ll be bad for you._ She shakes her head and says, _you’re wrong, daddy. He needs me._ (And it’s true, there’s something so hungry about Pete, something that drives him forward and she finds... She finds that there’s a corresponding hunger in _her_ , and she can, amazingly, understand him well enough. She doesn’t pull back, at the things she sees.)

She looks at her father, worried and impatient, drumming his fingers on the dinner table. If she did that... Her mother would remind her -- _no hands on the dinner table!_ \-- but for her father, it’s all right because it’s _his_ dinner-table. It’s his dinner, on the table. It’s his dining room, his house, his everything. Trudy’s mother, Jeannie, doesn’t say very much, she’s got a distant look in her eye. She’s not a part of this conversation, though she does occasionally speak up in support of Tom.

“He comes from a good family,” Trudy says, because that’s a thing that matters.  
“Yeah, yeah, the Dykemans used to own half of Manhattan. But that’s not the case now, and hasn’t been since your boyfriend was born,” says Tom, because he can be sharp if he wants to be.  
“My dears, please don’t argue about money around the dinner table...” Jeannie comes out of her fog to say this.

Trudy sits up straight. “I love him, daddy.”  
Tom slumps, defeated by this unexpected attack.

If talk of money is _verboten_ around the dinner table, then talk of emotions is doubly so.

 

**March 15th, 1960.**

The wedding is a disaster. Not a big disaster -- no one dies -- but a series of unexpected little disasters.

Trudy’s wedding dress is as modern as she could have wished for -- a tight bodice, a tea-length ballgown skirt with just layers upon layers of tulle... It was modeled after the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in _Funny Face_. That perfect dress is ripped during her final fitting and no one noticed until it is almost too late. Jeannie tries to cover it up, and says, it’s not too noticeable. Trudy wants to cry.

During the ceremony itself, Pete arrives five minutes late. Trudy has visions of the cake mouldering, of the filet mignon growing cold, the salmon growing green, and she, the mad, abandoned bride, cackling --- But no, there he is. He stumbles, coming up the aisle. He may be hungover, or it could be nervousness. He does look a little ill.

There’s a perceptible pause between the _I do_ ’s.

The cake is late and the bakery has sent the wrong one. The topper has a bride and groom all right, but the plastic bride has blond hair and for the second time that day, Trudy wants to cry.

Pete’s parents are cool towards her parents, but the Vogels have enough boisterous good cheer to mask the elder Campbells’ decided lack of enthusiasm.

Pete and Trudy dance beautifully. It’s the one time in the entire evening that they fit together, _just so_ , in exactly the right way.

Pete’s second cousin, Muriel, catches the bouquet -- white hothouse roses and lilies mixed in -- and it’s a pity, because Muriel is forty if she’s a day, and schoolmarmish kind of woman with iron grey hair and an iron disposition to match. She’s unlikely to get married any time soon. _But still,_ Trudy thinks, as they whirl around and clamber on to the waiting car. _Still, it’s good that she has something nice to remember us by._

The car - black, gleaming -- pulls away from the sidewalk, and finally Trudy breathes a sigh of relief. She leans back into Pete, who is sitting awkwardly on the leather seat. After a moment of hesitation, he puts his arms around her. 

“I can’t believe I’m married,” he says.  
“We’re married,” she says.

He gives a startled nod and she smiles. If it's a predatory smile, no one notices. 


End file.
